


The Game

by eggshits



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cutting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 17:57:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3456500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggshits/pseuds/eggshits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is not one of recovery, but of death for the ones who did not survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Game

**Author's Note:**

> Impulsive one shot with skimmed editing and lazy writing yw <3

Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you originally planned it to. 

And let’s not get anything wrong, it’s not really a problem at all. You completely understand why it happens. Life is just a game of fate and decisions, and you guess that this time around, you chose the wrong route. 

There’s a lot of ways of going about winning a game. Videogames specifically. There are people who mash their controller’s buttons until their fingers are as calloused as Dave’s Bro’s after twenty years of strifing. Or there’s people who cheat and find codes and play with a walkthrough until they finish the game. But neither of those ways are really the right way to go about things, because you don’t get the concept, you don’t obtain strategy, and in the end, you don’t feel nearly as good as you should when you finish.

But this type of game was different. 

This game was real and gory and bloody and violent and heartbreaking and you finally know what death feels like. You know exactly what it’s like to look your father in the eyes and scream for him to wake up, wake up or else you’re not going to be his son anymore. Or else you’re going to stop the prank wars and you’ll never talk to him again. You know what it’s like to feel your chest bleed out and what it’s like to see your best friend shot and battered and cut and stabbed and killed twelve times over. 

You were young and you were fragile and you broke. 

When Dave’s Bro died, you didn't think that Dave would've handled it as well as he did. Not a single tear was shed, and his lips didn’t even twitch. He only adjusted his sunglasses and told you that it was going to happen sooner or later. 

When the game ended, the trolls went back to their respective planets and the Alpha kids disappeared. Jade, Rose, Dave, and you went back to Earth and life just, resumed. As if that torturous day on April 13th never happened, as if you weren't dead on the inside.

But what the trolls couldn't warn you about and what any walk through or cheat code or button mashing could've done for you were the nightmares.  
In the months that you returned to Earth, you slept only a few hours a day. Every night it was a repetition of anxiety and panic and screams and blood and swords. Some nights you woke up and got onto pesterchum only to see

TG: do you still have the nightmares too

And you only reply

EB: yes

And that’s that.

\---

You eventually get out of high school with your diploma and with your straight A’s out of your AP and Honors classes, you apply for a nearby university, and you get in. You begin to study in the bio-medical field and you think you despise it. 

Eventually, you find Dave in a restaurant on campus and you see him for the first time since the end of the game. Even though you try to resume conversation, your mouth tastes bitter and your throat goes dry and there’s a thumping in your chest that you can’t control. The trembling starts up and its inexplicable how you begin crying without reason, so you leave the restaurant and leave Dave sitting at the diner with his fries dipped into his chocolate milkshake with a blank look on his face. 

Eventually, you find Jade and she speaks as if every part of the game never happened. She’s happy and she’s out exploring every part of the world from the Amazon rainforest to the Great Wall of China. She talks about her adventures and how she came back “to get a little taste of home.” She treats you like a brother, hugs you tight, and asks you why you aren’t hugging back, but you only smile and shrug in return. When she leaves for her flight to Greece, you don’t wave goodbye.

Eventually, you find Rose. The two of you find each other at the nearby supermarket, and she asks you to visit her apartment to talk. You both have tea and you talk about your lives, about your pets, parents, jobs, hobbies, so on and so forth. You’re barely paying any attention when she tells you that she can see right through you. When Rose tells you that you need to get help, you don’t understand what she means. 

When she tells you that you might have depression you don’t believe her and you leave the apartment without another word. 

\---

Later on, when you get your fancy degree from Medical school and you apply for jobs, you realize that life’s a lot more than studying and getting the grades you need on a test. Sometimes life is a game of fate and decisions and you think you took a wrong turn somewhere. You can’t find a job, but you continue to put your resume out and you continue to apply for positions at pharmacies and clinics. 

The nightmares stop. 

A year passes and you get by with the little jobs you find. Washing dishes at the pizzeria across from your apartment, organizing books at the library, and sorting paperwork at firms. You know, the simple things. But in that year, you don’t meet anyone spectacular. You date and you lose your virginity to a woman you didn’t love, but you suppose that’s just how life is. You get girlfriends and you have a one night stand with a guy, but you feel too overwhelmed with guilt to stay the morning after. 

Life began to feel a lot like a cycle of waking up, working, drinking, and sleeping. 

Eventually, the days get longer and you notice that you start to get sad when it’s around seven pm and the sun is gone. On the nights that you do cry, you think about what you did wrong, and you think about why your Dad never came back to visit after you left home. You think a lot about Dave and Rose and Jade, but you don’t remember the other people who also used to matter. You think that one of their names was Karkat. 

Your nightly schedule sooner or later evolves into drinking yourself into a stupor so that you can’t cry at night and you can’t think about your old friends who you think used to like you. 

This time specifically, you mix up your drinks and you laugh hysterically at how the colors of the drinks mix even though it’s 2 am in the morning and people are sleeping. You take shot after shot until you feel like it’s time to slip into the unconscious and the floor becomes your closest friend.

In the morning, your head spins, your vision sways, the light from the windows are too bright, and your breath smells terrible. When your stomach churns, you crawl to a nearby trashcan and heave miserably into it and retch until the back of your throat tastes like acid and your vision clears only slightly. 

After nursing your hangover with coffee and pills, you get dressed, you go out to find jobs, and you continue to search for opportunities and openings because that’s what your dad would’ve wanted you to do. This is your cycle. This is your everyday life from waking up, drinking coffee, finding work, going to work, going home, drinking, and sleeping. 

Sometimes when you forget to buy alcohol, you can’t keep away the bad thoughts and they come back to haunt you. They’re visions and hallucinations of dead people you don’t recognize anymore and you think that even though the nightmares have stopped, you’re terrified of sleeping. Your heart feels cold, but your body overheats, and you can’t stop crying no matter how hard you try. The blood under your skin feels like it’s being boiled but you feel so cold and the floor of the bathroom has become ice and you don’t remember the last time you felt anything other than emptiness. 

\---

Three years later, you don’t remember the names anymore. 

Your skin begins to feel hot and it prickles with anxiety and you can’t do anything but panic because you don’t remember the fucking names, you don’t remember their names, but they were so special to you. And you treasured them and you repeat your errors and you can’t think anymore or else it’ll hurt; you can’t do anything anymore or else you’ll cry, and you’re so fucking weak. So fucking, fucking weak. 

You fucked up the game. You cheated, you sped ahead, you skipped the credits, you can’t go back, and you screwed up one too many times to fix anything anymore. You don’t know why you were born, because you’re sure your father is dead but you don’t know how, because it feels like you’ve never had one. You don’t remember old friends, you can’t recall anything but Dane or June or Derek or Ruth or Jude or Robin or Dylan or anything. You can’t recall anything. 

Your life has become nothing. So you sit up so that you can feel less cold but it doesn’t work. You stand up on your feet and use the bathroom counter as support, but you continue to cry, and you don’t know why you’re living anymore. Because you don’t have anyone. Because you feel like you’re putting the shattered pieces of your world back together in the wrong places.

You don't know when the pain started but you can only see blood, and you're beginning to think that the stinging feeling of the blade against skin is a comfort in this world of terror. And you think that as long as you keep going, you'll feel like you have support even though there's not a soul out there living for you any longer. 

It feels like the earth is going to shatter beneath you and you feel like you want it to. 

Life is a game of fate and decisions and you have lost.


End file.
